Mike Morhaime InterviewsPCGamesN, GamerHub, and TeamLiquid had the chance to talk to Mike Morhaime at BWC about Starcraft 2 and eSports. If you are interested in interviews with Rob Pardo, there is a nice interview from a few months ago that I didn't summarize.

General

The mainstream media publications don't accept or report on major gaming tournaments, but they talk about tennis and golf, even though everyone doesn't watch them. Having Starcraft reported in a similar way would help to legitimize the sport. People who watch eSports see the top players as being at a similar level as pro athletes.

After Heart of the Swarm is released, focus can shift to preparing Blizzard All-Stars for beta.

Blizzard reads many of the fansite forums, and sometimes the discussion is better on some of these other sites. The site that the feedback is on isn't important, only the feedback itself.

There are no plans to make Diablo 3 an eSport, as it wasn't designed for it and not every game has to be one. WoW wasn't designed as an eSport either, but some of the parts of the game work well in the eSports environment.

Warcraft 3 was pirated a lot in China, but it ended up raising awareness of the game and helped out later when World of Warcraft was launched.

Challenge modes may have some possibilities as far as improving or expanding upon WoW esports events. WoW as an eSport is not a main focus of the WoW team, as there are many more things that are higher priority.

There have been several other MMOs that went free to play, but none of that has had a big impact on WoW. Blizzard still thinks WoW provides a really good value for the price, better than most forms of entertainment, including the free to play games.

Heart of the Swarm

Testing Heart of the Swarm in such a public way is the only way to make sure that players have a chance to understand and adapt to changes being made.

Starcraft 2 can be intimidating to start for players that aren't interested in playing highly competitively. Heart of the Swarm tries to address part of this by adding a training mode that allows you to play against a progressively harder AI and get basic gameplay tips. Unranked matchmaking should also help in this regard.

The new Heart of the Swarm units are being added to fill gaps in the races, similar to what was done in the original Starcraft.

The new resume from replay feature will allow tournaments to pick up properly again after disruption and players to practice different scenarios using another player's replay or without having to play a full game.

Heart of the Swarm has a nice campaign that is important to furthering the story, but it also has great gameplay that will be the reason people are still playing it for a long time.

Starcraft 2

Mike Morhaime is currently Bronze and trying hard for Silver.

SC2 has a lot of value for the price, especially compared to some of the "free to play" games.

There is a lot of potential for SC2 growth in China as more and more people are able to afford broadband and gaming.

The feedback from players in China on the Mists of Pandaria expansion has been great.

One of the pleasant surprises at BWC is how well the non-Koreans did in competition.

Blizzard is going to take more of a leadership role in organizing and scheduling the tournaments. Right now there is so much going on that it is hard to follow and there is no clear story like you find in other sports.

It would be nice if everyone offered a reasonable quality stream of tournaments for free, as it would lower the barrier for people that are curious about SC2 but not willing to pay yet.

When asked about adding things like premium portraits, he said that the current model is viable and the current focus is on making a great expansion.

Rated Battlegrounds 10v10 Series
Kollektiv and Bailamost are leading 10v10 teams in a series of Rated Battleground matches over on ArenaJunkies. The second half takes place tonight at 6PM PST / 9PM EST / 3AM CET.

Blue Tweets

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

ClassesThere's no "lead rogue designer." They've said this a few times. It's a collaborative effort.
This. We don't want a design environment with developers campaigning for buffs for "their" class. (Source)

Ghostcrawler if you could give a class a revamp what would it be?
Don't think any class needs a revamp ATM. If it weren't for risk, would be fun to make 2 DPS specs in 1 class very different. (Source)

People don't use sims as an argument. They use raidbots analysis, which shows equally skewed DPS balance as the sims.
Raidbots can provide good data if analyzed intelligently. Disagree that it often reflects the sims. (Source)

Why is it that Restodruids and Holypaladins "naturally" have no-cost spells(clearstate,wog),but Priests and Shamans haven't.
just a class distinction. We balance mana costs and returns around it. (Source)

Would it be possible to see a class balance Q&A soon, kind of like you guys did in Cataclysm?
You mean with user questions like the Cover it Live or Reddit we did? Would be fun. (Source)

classes weren't sat for spine due to 20% gaps. It was for 50-100%+ due to cooldowns, ramp up, etc
But these are usually in cases of best guilds trying to beat content while undergeared so they need to use more tricks that most. (Source)

Do you read class forums at all? You've made Russians start quitting, that's when you know you've broken something.
Stopped reading class forums personally. Too much echo chamber and chasing out dissenting opinions. I read the role forums. (Source)

Is it better to balance on what a class can possibly do, or what the player base currently is doing with a class?
We go with the former, but we don't expect players to play at robot levels. (Source)

They don't balance around top parses. GC continually mentions sampling bias as something they're wary of.
Top parses are super tricky because they display the most skillful players but also the most lucky. (Source)

Most of firelands also favored resto druids, yet garalon (most friendly for druids) still has us ~10% lagging behind in 25's.
Many raids heal Garalon clumped which benefits shaman and monk a lot (overall, HPS is not a great way to compare healers). (Source)

Death Knight (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)You never did answer my tweets: You've basically screwed up blood dks mitigation and made them useless for pvp now. Why?
Blood DKs were too hard to kill in PvP with DS. Tank mitigation is balanced around bosses, which can feel unfair in pvp. (Source)

Priest (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)There has been alot of confusion regarding Spectral Guise. It's not useable while cc'ed anymore since 5.1, bug or intended?
Intended. Sorry that we failed to patch note it. We will update the notes. (Source)

Shaman (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)I can understand the silence.totem nerf for resto shammies. It hurts the other specs though. Is there another way?
If it comes to that, we'd rather give Ele and Enhance a survival cooldown to use when silenced. (Source)

That totem nerf was nothing but you being stubborn after an extremely poor decision. You still havent answered on it
To repeat: we thought dropping a totem was too hard to counter now that they have such great utility. Disagreement != stubborn. (Source)

PvE
Sympathetic to the argument that 16 bosses is already a big time commitment. Different world from small tiers like Firelands. (Source)

Any reason why Flask Cauldrons didn't make an appearance in MoP ?
We wanted to return some responsibility of raiding to individual members not just officers. (Source)

You dont believe the mass exodus to overcrowded realms as well as the decline in general raiding is hurting guilds?
Realm balance is a huge concern, but the solutions aren't simple or we would have done them. Not seeing a raiding decline though. (Source)

Can you tell us a bit more about how boss encounters are designed in general and specific for MoP?
Hmm. Not via Twitter. Ion is working on a water cooler or two. (Source)

would you rather people go through content too fast, or not at all? (people ignoring rep grinds)
With the latter, I suspect some players will do the content. With the former, there is too little content for everyone. (Source)So you like 50% of people 100% happy vs 100% of people 50% happy? If you had to choose, not being snarky.
It seems harsh when you put it that way. I'd hope that the 50% of people not happy had other things that made them happy. (Source)

Feng is quite good, but T14 is excellent in general. Best tier of raiding in *years*. Ranks w/ Ulduar & Sunwell
Yay. Just wait until the next one. (Source)

why did you implement the upgrade system, now high end raiders get the advantage from PVE just like cata....
Not sure I understand. If you mean PvE, shouldn't they get best gear? If you mean PvP, upgraded Conq gear is better. (Source)

have you guys ever thought of giving LFR a 10 man option instead of forcing 25 man LFR?
We think 25 works better for LFR. Easier to carry less experienced folks. Easier to pull while backfilling. Feels epic. (Source)

PvPRandom chance at PvP rewards when winning arena matches/BGs (maybe scaled based on MMR) could be interesting.
Yeah, would just need to avoid making botting more attractive. (Source)

Burst in pvp was stupid, 5.1 added more pvp power but not extra resil. Please do us all a favor and quit your job, ty.
You guys would just beat on whoever replaced me until someone said: Things were better in the GC era. (Source)No offense, but I'd take my chances. I think you do a bad job at PVP, because you personally don't enjoy it.
I actually do enjoy it, but I also understand that what I personally like isn't always the right call for the game (e.g. threat). (Source)

So melees can Hit for 70-150k with "instant" attacks, but casters should need to cast? Yeah thats balance!
I can turn that around: so casters can cast at range but melee need to close the gap? (Source)

Is it true your philosophy is "it's not okay for melee to shut down casters, but it's fine for casters to shut down melee"
I feel like players are complaining about casters (mage, lock) and melee (warrior, maybe Feral) right now. (Source)

What do you think about nerfing damage cds a bit and buffing consistent damage? Arena revolves too much around big cds.
There's a balance though. Burst windows are often the only thing allowing you to score a kill before they're healed back up. (Source)

What about making those 1 pvp specs the way you balance pvp and just make the other specs slightly weaker, but still playable?
There is a lot of wisdom in that approach, but I think a lot of players would be angry. Interesting discussion though. (Source)

Sorry Greg, I'm calling complete BS on this, Blizzard actively hired pro wow players to balance PVE do it for PvP
We hire great PvP players too. What I disagreed with was making every change that players ask for, even expert players. (Source)

Guild Wars 2 - Dec 14 Updates
ArenaNet posted patch notes with lots of changes and balance tweaks for the recent patch. One of the more interesting parts of the notes are the sections that explains why some of the changes were made and some class balance philosophies. You can find all of the new items and recipes on GW2DB.

Comic - If You Create It, They Will FarmNerfNow takes on daily quests in one of their recent comics.

Starcraft isn't reported by the mainstream media because it isn't a sport. At least not in the traditional sense. And it will never be associated in that way. Morhaime comes off as ridiculous by comparing Starcraft to tennis or golf.

That's the issue. Right there. Its not the way the moderators are, its what they have to do to get through all the bullshit they deal with. Like you.

As a moderator, I whole heartedly agree. There are times when I would love constructive discussion on a certain topic, but posters just start arguing, flaming, and generally causing mayhem. That's just on my lonely Mage forums here...I can imagine what a Blizzard CM goes through on a daily basis, and they actually get vile AIMED their way.

Ahh look Morhaime saying nothing as usual. The dude is just sheet of PR paper. He never actually knows whats going on with his games beyond their price point, and how to sell more of them without actually knowing anything. A market researcher on his best day. Game pirating is okay as long as later I can charge them for a game they can't pirate

Starcraft isn't reported by the mainstream media because it isn't a sport. At least not in the traditional sense. And it will never be associated in that way. Morhaime comes off as ridiculous by comparing Starcraft to tennis or golf.

Ahh look Morhaime saying nothing as usual. The dude is just sheet of PR paper. He never actually knows whats going on with his games beyond their price point, and how to sell more of them without actually knowing anything. A market researcher on his best day. Game pirating is okay as long as later I can charge them for a game they can't pirate

Oh, but you know. Don't you? You know more than he would, right? Of course you do.

"The mainstream media publications don't accept or report on major gaming tournaments, but they talk about tennis and golf, even though everyone doesn't watch them. Having Starcraft reported in a similar way would help to legitimize the sport. People who watch eSports see the top players as being at a similar level as pro athletes."

Except in Sweden, occasionally on TV and also in newspapers quite often (our biggest ones). This with live coverages of events. (with Swedish commentators, ugh :) )

Starcraft isn't reported by the mainstream media because it isn't a sport. At least not in the traditional sense. And it will never be associated in that way. Morhaime comes off as ridiculous by comparing Starcraft to tennis or golf.

You have obviously never been to Korea, there it pretty much IS the sport, there are mulitple tv channels dedicated to nothing but starcraft.

I'm not even talking about the BS they get aimed at them. I can agree that most of that should be moderated out. However, some of it is legitimate. But I'm talking about the stuff that gets moderated out that is 'off-topic' and yet is actually interesting and "better." Or some threads that are closed because there is another topic about it already, and yet it's not the same thing. Someone wants to talk about a more specific topic and it's getting lost in a bigger discussion. I understand it's their site, but they have a very narrow scope of what is allowed and everything else gets moderated out. It's no wonder fan sites, like this one, have better discussions. Because they are ALLOWED TO HAVE THEM!

Starcraft isn't reported by the mainstream media because it isn't a sport. At least not in the traditional sense. And it will never be associated in that way. Morhaime comes off as ridiculous by comparing Starcraft to tennis or golf.

its called eSports. see...sports...

What kind of retard is asking those questions anyway?

"So melees can Hit for 70-150k with "instant" attacks, but casters should need to cast? Yeah thats balance!"

melee range is far more limiting than ranged, so casting balances it. Otherwise casters wouldnt even be casters, they would be ranged-melee.
Think god damn, a caster with instants is running and using instants vs melee who is running after the caster. The caster is dpsing normally because he can do it from range, the melee cannot do shit because he needs to be in the melee range.
Sure we have gap closers but we ALSO HAVE GAP OPENERS. retards.

That's the issue. Right there. Its not the way the moderators are, its what they have to do to get through all the bullshit they deal with. Like you.

This.

People such as the person you quoted, are just SO damned convinced of their own superiority. And my experience is that people getting banned "just for asking a question about how they handle things", didn't use a tone quite so innocent and objective.

Originally Posted by Seramore

How miserable is your life to be posting on a fansite for a game that you hate/hate the ideals of?

as a long-time Hockey fan - try seeing coverage in a non-hockey town. I am happy I live in a cold area, but you go down south, even places with a team, getting coverage is hard. And he wants coverage for a non-athletic competition?